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The igus® car is visiting the city of Aguascalientes , where customers in the Agricutural and Automotive industry confirmed the benefits of no corrosion, dirt and high load resistance of Drytech products. The car also visited the “Plaza de Toros Monumental de Aguascalientes” is a bullring in the city of Aguascalientes Mexico. It is currently used for bull fighting and concerts. The stadium holds 16,000 people and it was inaugurated on November 23, 1974. Its the 4th largest bullring in Mexico.

The igus® car is visiting Puebla, near the monument to Ignacio Zaragoza, he was declared Meritorious of the Mother country in heroic degree, his remains were exhumed from the Pantheon of “San Fernando” in Mexico City to be transferred to the city of Puebla. Now they are located in the area of the “Fuertes de Loreto y Guadalupe”, where a memorial was built. The remains of his wife, Rafaela Padilla, were also buried in the monument in 1979.

This is the last day in Toluca and the igus® car visited “Los portales” in downtown Toluca. These arches along the buildings are from the 19th century and have become a distinctive symbol of the city of Toluca. The portals give Toluca a very distinctive character and a particular interpretation of the idea of a mall, with facilities and stores of all kinds.

We continue the motion plastics tour around México. The igus® car is at the center of México. This occasion we visit The Angel of Independence, most commonly known by the shortened name El Ángel and officially known as Monumento a la Independencia, it is a victory column on a traffic roundabout over Paseo de la Reforma in downtown Mexico City.

After 62,283 miles (100,240 km), four continents, over 30 countries and 14 months of travel, iglide on Tour has come to an end.

Just to recap the tour, the car was equipped with 56 of our bearings in a range of different applications including; the convertible top, throttle valve, alternator, window regulator, windshield wiper, handbrake, brake pedal, gear shift and seat adjustment.

The car ended its tour on display at the Hannover (Messe) Fair in Hannover, Germany. Hannover Messe is the world’s biggest industrial fair. Typically there are around 6,500 exhibitors and 250,000 visitors.

As promised, the applications were removed from the car on stage at Hannover and presented to the audience.

The results were as expected; none of the 56 assembled bearings had a trace of wear or tear.

The individual bearings weren’t dismantled from their individual components because of the danger of damaging them, but they were examined by igus experts and they all were working properly.

The car received high attention at the fair. 44 top journalists from engineering and automation media joined the press conference about the tour. People were even seen taking selfies with the car.

The car has traveled through extreme conditions while on tour; deserts and potholes in India, dirt and mud highways of Alaska, 80% humidity in Iowa, winter in the Netherlands and the congested streets of some of the biggest cities in the world (NYC, Chicago, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro and Beijing.) It traveled by boat, by plane and even via helicopter to make it to all of its destinations. This tour truly put the bearings to the test. Our bearings were able to withstand all of these different environments to prove that plastic bushings are not only equal, but better than metal.

The iglide car has been re-retrofitted with new bearings and is free to be used to make local customer visits in Germany.

We’ve been spending our time tracking along Eastern Europe, taking in the cold weather and the beautiful scenery along the way. In the Czech Republic, we visited some customers and met up with the eForce Prague Formula team, who organized a race against the iglide car, take a look at the vehicles involved and see if you can guess who won!

Guess again – in an unlikely (more like straight lucky!) turn of events, the eForce Formula car had a small technical error, leading iglide to victory!!

No competitors here – just friends!

After the race, we spent some time with our customers, showing them the iglide car and explaining about our whirlwind journey – its hard to believe that our little car has now been on the road for a year, and has crossed the 80,000 km mark!

Next up, we hit the road for Trencin, Slovakia, along with our colleague, Martin who joined in for the ride. Unfortunately, we had to cancel plans for the afternoon as heavy snow started piling up, making it impossible to continue! We decided to turn back to our hotel, which was only a few kilometers down the road, but took us nearly an hour to reach!

After the snow subsided, we took some time to see the sights in Slovakia, including Nitra Castle– built in the 11th century!!

From Nitra, we drove South to Hungary, beginning our tour of the country in Dunakiliti, a small village in the Northeastern tip of the country. There, we visited automotive customers, and Pannonhalma Archabbey, the second largest abbey of it’s kind. From Dunakiliti, it was off to Budapest, Hungary’s capital. The city’s amazing illuminated skyline stopped us in our tracks in the evening, and you can clearly see why!

Where to next? Stay tuned to find out where iglide on tour is due to travel!

As we finished our Scandinavian leg of our tour, we had to take the time to make our donations to organizations in our participating countries. First up was Sweden, where €2355, or $2727, was donated to “Frihamnen – Hemlösas Hus,” or Homeless Houses Freeport, which provides help for homeless people, and works to eliminate homelessness from Sweden. Mr. Anderberg (3rd from the left in the photo below), the organization’s chairman, joined us to accept the donation.

Next was Norway, where igus GmbH and our Norwegian distributor ASI Automatikk donated to a local children’s hospital. We drove 910 km across Norway, which we rounded up to 1,000, then donated 20 Norwegian Krones for each, coming to a total donation of 20,000 NOK, or $2,630. With the money, the hospital can expand their playground, and purchase some new toys for their patients! (from L to R: Geir Berven (ASI Automatikk AS), Elmar Reder (igus GmbH), Grete Nygård Spilling (nurse), Kjellfrid Tolfsen (nurse), Turid Stadheim (nurse), Karl Weinmeister (iglide on tour).

After making our donations to these great organizations and sadly removing our local moose decal, it was time to leave our Scandinavian hosts and head toward Szczecin, Poland.

With Poland’s head of iglide bearings, Marcin (Martin to some of us!), as our giude, we set out to explore beautiful Poland for the first time, such as the Europe’s largest wooden pier in the seaside town of Sopot, where we took some time to explore the local area.

We also had some time to take in some local historical sights. We visited the European Solidarity Center, as well as a section of the incredibly massive Malbork Castle, the largest castle by surface area in the world!

We arrived in Sweden very early in the morning on just a few hours sleep to meet with Dirk Schaar, editor of the German Magazine MDA Technologies, and Oliver Cyrus, igus’ head of PR and Advertising, who both joined in on the drive. Our first stop was the Swedish capital, Stockholm. We visited Riksdag, which is Sweden’ house of parliament, and the stopped by the Stockholm Palace, or Sveriges Kungahus, the official residence of the Swedish royal family.

Top: Nils, Dirk Schaar (MDA Technologies), Karl, Oliver Cyrus (PR and Advertising at igus), Sandor. Bottom: The iglide car at the back of the Sveriges Kungahus.

Being in Sweden, it seemed essential that we stop by the ABBA museum as well! 😉

Being in Scandinavia for this part of our tour, we had decorated the iglide car with a sticker of a moose, but over the weekend we had a chance to get up-close and personal with the popular animals at an “Älgsafari” or a moose safari!

We had a lot of fun, but had to get moving to finish up our tour of Sweden and make it back to Denmark. We spent the next day in Copenhagen to do some sightseeing – it was tough, as we were looking for a landmark only 4 feet tall!

We found her! Den lille havfrue (The Little Mermaid) in Copenhagen

In the city center, we had hoped to visitTivoli, one of the world’s most famous amusement parks. Unfortunately, the park and its surrounding gardens are closed for renovations until the spring. We did, however, find Amalienborg, the winter home of the Danish royal family, where we took a final group photo with Dirk and Oliver before they left home for Germany.

That same wind that powers the country was so high that we had no choice but to take the ferry out of Frederikshavn, an important harbor town in the Northern tip of Denmark. The ferry took us through the North Sea under very high winds, with waves as high as 20 feet! While the iglide car was tucked safely below deck, two of my colleagues got a bit seasick and had to take cover as well. More to come as we make our way into Norway!